Progressive Wednesday

This Wednesday: Truly Supporting Our Troops

Problem:

We aren’t at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our soldiers are.

Both wars individually have gone on longer than the U.S. involvement in the War of 1812, Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korean War, and Persian Gulf War. There doesn’t seem to be an end in sight for either.

Our fellow Americans are sweating and dodging, not just bullets, but bombs in the desert and on our behalves.

We know some of them personally. We miss them. We want them home.

You might be thinking: There’s nothing I can do to help stop the wars. That’s too big for me to tackle. We respectfully disagree, but that’s not the problem we’re talking about this Wednesday.

We owe our soldiers more than we can repay them. That’s the problem.

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Make Progress:

Diane was a student of mine at Ohio State. During the autumn quarter, Diane asked to be excused one Friday. Why? Because she was going to marry her boyfriend before he was shipped off to Iraq. Most of my students asked for time off because their friends needed to be bailed out of jail or because their Great Aunt conveniently died for the seventh time right before a paper was due. So, Diane’s request couldn’t possibly be refused. And she and her one-and-only did indeed wed.

After winter break, Diane signed up to be in another of my writing courses. This quarter, she seemed transformed. Some days she’d be filled with a kind of bubbly hope, the kind you see in people truly in love. Other days, she’d snap at fellow students, fall asleep in class (surprising since it started at 2 pm), and miss office hours appointments she’d scheduled with me. While discussing one of her papers, she started crying, dropped the paper in the trash can, and slowly walked out of the room backwards.

Come spring, I could tell Diane was a wreck. She pulled me aside on the second day of course to ask if it was okay if she left class every once and a while. I thought this was strange because my students never had to ask to go to the restroom, grab a snack, or get a drink of water. Hell, they could even take off for a minute or two to stretch if they needed to. “I need to leave sometimes,” she said, “to go outside and cry.”

And she did. Often. I’d say at least twice a week. Of course, she also missed at least one class a week. As the quarter moved along, Diane would forget to turn in assignments completely or would just turn in one page for a five-page essay. She’d pop by my office hours just to talk about the latest letter she’d received from her husband. She’d ask me to read them. Over the course of the year, I watched her weight dramatically drop to unhealthy levels.

Summer came and went, and the next autumn I saw Diane on campus the first day of classes. She smiled at me with her lips. I assumed her husband had returned. He hadn’t.

“I got divorced,” she told me. “I just couldn’t take it any more. I love him. But it stopped being worth it. The love, I mean.”

This is a cost of war. This is one side of war.

But this Wednesday, five year anniversary of the War in Iraq, we’re going to look closely at war from the other side. Please, we know it’s easier to do, but don’t look away.

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Wedding picture c/o this photographer.

It’s so much more than money, but it’s money, too.

3,927 American soldiers have died serving us during Operation Iraqi Freedom (also known as the illegal occupation of Iraq). 477 American soldiers have died serving us during Operation Enduring Freedom (also know as the War in Afghanistan). This is a greater loss than anything that can be calculated in dollars and cents. This is a loss that devastates entire towns, devastates small families in the most urban and most rural patches of America, devastates husbands, wives, children met and those, even more tragically, never met.

According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the current national debt is $9,210,856,011,325.78. So you don’t have to count the digits between commas, let me just tell you that that’s 9 trillion freaking dollars.

Why mention this last statistic? Check this mother out from the Congressional Research Service and Office of Management and Budget Data: In 2007 dollars, the illegal occupation of Iraq and the War in Afghanistan have cost American taxpayers $695.7 billion. How does that compare to other wars fought by this here United States of America? Well, I wouldn’t ask this question without answering it myself, my friends:

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To be perfectly honest, I’ve lost sight of the answer, but I’ll offer this one up: if we come to the United Nations with humility instead of hubris, maybe we can get a peacekeeping force in Iraq. Maybe. Maybe, maybe, if we come to the United Nations with diplomacy instead of despicability, we can get a hand in Afghanistan against the Taliban, since they still hold so much power and influence:

Attacks by the Taliban in Afghanistan surged last year, according to previously unpublished figures from allied military forces fighting insurgents.

Statistics compiled by the multinational International Stabilisation Force in Afghanistan show attacks on international troops and the Afghan government have gone up by between a fifth and a third.

Maybe we can do something. Call your Senators (just click here). Call your Representatives (just click here to get your full 9-digit zip code, then just click here). Demand that we go to the U.N. and ask for the help we require. It makes a difference. It does.

As American as– ¦

Apple pie, amber waves, baseball, hot dogs, the Fourth of July, SUVs, the iPod, Reader's Digest, and comic books. While not all of these are synonymous with the good old red, white, and blue, they are all things have become a part of everyday life for many of us residing somewhere between “sea– and “shining sea.– For better (baseball and Reader's Digest) or for worse (SUV's and hot dogs), we have come to think of many of these things as essential, and we even take them for granted.

There are many Americans who would love to take these things for granted like the rest of us, but for whom that becomes harder and harder with each bullet that flies by their head and with each roadside bomb that sends them diving for cover under their improperly-armored vehicle. I speak, of course, about our troops.

At Progressive Wednesday, we're not the kind of Patriots that drive around with yellow ribbon magnets on our car that say, “Support Our Troops.– We want them home, pronto, and until they're home, we search for ways actually make their lives easier and safer. In March, we dedicated a Wednesday to doing things that actually support our troops; you can check it out here.

In our searches we have come across a website dedicated to just that. The appropriately named, HereInReality.com has compiled a list of organizations and programs that make it easy for those of us who don't risk our lives for others with every step to help out those who do. Some cost a few bucks, some a few minutes, and some just ask you to utilize a small talent. From baking cookies, to donating a magazine subscription, or even fostering the pet of a deployed troop, they make it as easy as, well, apple pie.

It's important that our troops get a taste of home, that they can step away from the constant surrealism of war and bury their nose in a book, or remember what's it's like to bite into Grandma's cookies, until they can do it once again in the comfort of Grandma's kitchen.

So skip on over to HereInReality.com. Then see what you can do to improve the lives of those who have sacrificed so much to help improve ours.

Picture thanks to this fine baker

This Wednesday: May We Never Forget

Problem:

Yesterday marked the sixth anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Like nearly every American that day too far away to help, I sat glued to Peter Jennings' and Tom Brokaw's continuous broadcasts of that day's horrifying attacks well into the night, until weariness finally took hold.

As a nation, we swore that day never to forget the victims of the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings. We swore that we would honor their sacrifice by taking care of the families of those killed, by focusing our military and foreign policy on finding those responsible and preventing them from causing further harm to our country, and by providing the best medical care to those who were injured, both physically and psychologically, on that worst of days.

We have not done that–at least not to the extent that we should.

Make Progress:

Six years later there are still people suffering from the effects of the collapsing towers, Osama bin Laden has not been “smoked out– as promised, and others responsible are regaining strength in Afghanistan while our forces are tied up in Iraq, a war that was sold to the American people partly with a fabricated connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of September 11th.

Fortunately, there are still ways in which we, as individuals, can help. Here's how.

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Mail:

As I'm quite sure you know, Osama bin Laden, well, he's still out there: not because of our service men and women, not because they don't want to hunt him down and catch him, but because our federal government has let us down, focusing the bulk of our military and (in all likelihood) intelligence agencies on Iraq and its surrounding countries.

At Progressive Wednesday, we believe there is, not only a strategic need to capture the maniac behind 9/11, but a moral obligation as well. In other words, we owe it to all Americans living and all Americans who died six years ago yesterday to find him.

So, we're asking that you ship this letter, or some variation if it, to your local newspaper.

Dear Editor:

The sixth anniversary of September 11 has come and passed, and as I'm sure all readers of this newspaper know, Osama bin Laden, the maniac behind that horrific day, remains free.

I believe there is, not only a strategic need to capture this man, but a moral obligation as well. We owe it to all Americans living and to all Americans who died six years ago yesterday to capture bin Laden.

What can we do? We can call our Senators and Representatives in Congress to do what's right: demand that the executive branch redouble its efforts to hunt down bin Laden, bringing at least some sense of justice to the victims of 9/11.

Sincerely,

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Sign:

For nearly six years the official death toll at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was 2,749. More than half a decade later, that number has started to climb. According to CNN.com:

The death of U.S. Department of Education attorney Felicia Dunn-Jones, 42, five months after she became trapped in dust caused by the collapse of the first World Trade Center tower, is now being considered a homicide and her name has been added to the official list of World Trade Center victims.

There have been a few local efforts in New York and New Jersey to help people who are suffering as Ms. Dunn-Jones did. In September 2003, the World Trade Center Health Registry was created to obtain as much information as possible about the health of those who were in lower Manhattan when the towers came down, especially those valiant souls who were digging for days in the rubble. 30,000 have already signed up and regularly give updates to their condition so that health professionals can get a clearer picture of the consequences of exposure as well as what to do about it. (If you were there and haven't registered, you can do so here.)

Still, while the Federal Government has falsely used the September 11th attacks to sell a war in Iraq that has cost Americans nearly half a trillion bucks, not a single Jefferson, neither coin nor paper (he's on the two-dollar bill), has been spent to help the estimated 150,000 rescuers and civilians who may have need of medical attention due to the effects of toxins released when the World Trade Center towers collapsed.

Here is a petition, sponsored by 9/11 Environmental Action, urging the President and Health and Human Services Secretary, Michael O. Leavitt to:

Create a federally funded program to screen, track and treat 9/11-related illnesses for all those who lived, worked and attended school in Lower Manhattan and other affected neighborhoods.

James Zadroga, 34, was the most recent to die due to toxic dust. Please take a minute, no, 30 seconds, to add your name to the list, or, as James father said, “They’re going to be adding to that (WTC Memorial) wall for the next 20 years.–

Photo credit goes here.

Call:

Now that you've signed the petition, your voice has been heard with the masses. Now I'll ask you to make it heard by itself. Last week, Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY), Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), and Congressman Vito Fossella (R-NY) took the first step toward providing that health care to those still affected by Ground Zero toxins. According to their press release, the bill would do the following:

• Ensure that everyone exposed to the toxins of Ground Zero has a right to be medically monitored and anyone who is sick as a result has a right to treatment.
• Expand care to the whole exposed community, including residents, area workers and students, and to the thousands of people who came from across the country to respond to the 9/11 attacks.
• Provide compensation for economic damages and losses by reopening the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund.
• Build on the expertise of the Centers of Excellence, which are providing high-quality health care to thousands of responders.
• Require the federal government to collect data about and research the extent and severity of WTC-related illnesses.
• Establish and fund Coordinating Centers of Excellence to collect and analyze data, coordinate outreach, and develop medical monitoring and treatment protocols.
• Require the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to conduct or support research, diagnose, and treat WTC-related conditions.

If you don't think that the United States government should provide these medical benefits for those who were there, whose lives were in danger, who spent weeks digging through the debris at Ground Zero, all while breathing in toxic fumes, then, well… do nothing.

But if, like us, you think that the government has a responsibility to protect its people from terrorism, whether the danger is immediate or long term, please call your congressperson and tell them to support the Maloney-Nadler-Fossella 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. You can find their contact information here.

Oh, and here's some help, in case you need it. It can be a bit nerve-racking to call your Representative.

• I'm a voter from [name your state], and I am calling to voice my strong support for the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. The United States has an obligation to help all of those who risked their lives helping others on September 11th and in the days following. If Congressman/woman [last name] wants my support in future elections, [he or she] must support this legislation. Thank you for your time.

Photo credit goes here.

The occupation of Iraq occupies our cops.

The occupation of Iraq, besides taking the lives of 3,511 American soldiers, besides taking the lives of Iraqi civilians, besides costing American taxpayers like you and like me $436 billion (which is climbing by $200 million each day), the occupation of Iraq might be boosting crime here. Read for yourself:

The prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have put pressure on the National Guard, whose citizen-soldiers can be called away from civilian jobs for months or years at a time to fight beside regular soldiers in war zones.

About 16 percent of the 182,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are members of the National Guard.

But here’s where we get to the smaller bite out of crime:

Communities across America have been especially hard-hit by the deployment of some 24,000 police officers since September 11, 2001. Police officers make up 5.1 percent of the National Guard and military reserve.

Repeated deployments to war zones do more than mess with police schedules — the loss of just one officer can devastate a small town, where police forces are shoestring operations and the jobs of the town’s “first responders” often overlap.

Because so many of our brave boys and girls in blue are fighting unnecessarily in Iraq, police departments do less patrols and less community outreach. And because, “by law, employers must leave a Guard member’s job open while the worker is deployed,” police departments are struggling to fill slots temporarily. Why? Because the kinds of folks who become cops are also the kind of folks who join the military. And because training and recruitment take time, money, and people, and many of those people are, go figure, in Iraq.

So, we’re going to remind you about the Wednesday we wrote recently called “Memorial Day, Everyday,” which includes five ways we can help bring a peaceful and successful end to the occupation of Iraq, convince others this can truly happen, and aid our returning soldiers in the process.

Picture c/o this photographer.

This Wednesday: Memorial Day Everyday

Problem:

Yes, yes, yes, dear readers, I realize that Memorial Day was “celebrated” on Monday, but there’s two things to consider: first, Memorial Day is actually today, May 30, we just “observed” it on Monday; second, it seems odd to us that we’d remember those who’ve died in the name of our country for only 24 hours, if that. The majority of us, yours truly included, spent the vacation day gobbling bratwurst and watching baseball on the idiot box.

So, this Wednesday, this Memorial Day Wednesday, we’re going to do something for the troops so they needn’t just be in our memories.

But that’s not the biggest problem we’re facing today. Today, we’re facing a continuation of our senseless occupation of Iraq. On Friday, May 25, I realized, once again, why I belong to no political party: politicians aren’t listening to the people, the 9/11 Commission, the Iraq Study Group, or the rest of the free and not-so-free world. The Democratically controlled Congress and the Republican president just agreed to legislation to continue funding our occupation of Iraq with no end in sight (I suppose “never” is technically a time, but it’s rather far off).

An occupation can only end two ways: annexation or withdrawal. Since we’d rather have Puerto Rico or the District of Columbia as the 51st state, we’re calling for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

Opponents of a troop withdrawal, the few that remain, may say that to do so will destabilize the region. I’m fairly certain — if there’s any accuracy to the news we’re streamed every day — that the region is pretty well destabilized. I’m fairly certain that those destabilizing the region either despise us, fear us, or are us. But in none of those cases does that mean the Iraqis want to listen to us, particularly if what they’re hearing is mortar shells and machine guns and violent knocks on their doors. Opponents of withdrawal (which I suppose means they want to add Iraq as a state) also spew things like: “If we don’t fight the terrorists there, we’ll fight them here.” Seeing as the vast majority of terrorists don’t live in Iraq, I’m pretty sure our 160,000 troops in that country aren’t actually not fighting many of the world’s terrorists.

Let’s get something straight and straighten out our diction: we are not mired in a “civil war.” We are mired in an occupation of a sovereign country, a country of approximately 27,500,000 people. And we’ve slaughtered at least 64,333 of those civilians[1] for no ties to 9/11, for no ties to weapons of mass destruction, for no semblance of a peaceful democracy.

And the potential blowback from our occupation is rather terrifying. Blowback — not our freedoms, not our wealth, not our (somewhat) equal treatment of women, and not even our McRestaurants — caused 9/11. If we want peace on our land and on others, the sooner we withdraw, the better. We want the world community to respect us, and this is best achieved through a good example (and not imposing), through peace, through fair trade, through humanitarian missions and actions.

So let�s let logic rule this Memorial Day Wednesday. It’s time that we at Progressive Wednesday — our valiant staff and our dedicated readers — take a stand.

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Make Progress:

3,454 American troops have died because of our occupation of Iraq. And here’s another sobering factoid: “In the period from Memorial Day 2006 through Saturday, 980 soldiers and Marines died in Iraq, compared to 807 deaths in the previous year.”

On top of that ugly fact — with 114 American casualties in Iraq this month, May 2007 becomes the third deadliest month since the occupation began, and the highest total deaths since November 2004. In other words, our time in Iraq is getting worse.

So our goal this here Wednesday is simple: let us help bring an end to this mess as soon as possible, and let us properly remember those who’ve fought in our name. Can we? We can. Enough said.

Let’s put away the ketchup and mustard, let’s put the volleyball nets back in the shed, let’s put the kids to bed, and let’s do something. Let us all — united together by the name of our country and our shared values — do something powerfully patriotic.

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[1] And at least hundreds of these deaths could have been avoided. But we insisted on using cluster munitions, and “50 strikes on top Iraqi leaders failed to kill any of the intended targets.”

Memorial Day Everyday: Salute

Salute:

We believe the best tribute to our sisters and brothers — those soldiers who’ve served and lived and those we, as a country, have laid to rest — is to help end the occupation of Iraq. As such, we’d like to point you to a fantastic organization trying to do just that: Iraq Veterans Against the War. If you want to help convince the paltry number of those around who think we should stick it out in Iraq with no end in sight, check out IVAW’s webpage for information — they outline it in a pithy and powerful way.

The IVAW calls for the following:

• Immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq;
• Reparations for the destruction and corporate pillaging of Iraq so that Iraqi people can control their own lives and future; and
• Full benefits, adequate health care (including mental health), and other supports for returning servicemen and women.

We�re not sure if we could agree more. And what does the IVAW do? Four biggies include:

1. Educating the public about the occupation of Iraq through speaking engagements and by contacting the media.
2. Speaking to classrooms about the realities of being a soldier.
3. Supporting “Conscientious Objectors and others facing military prosecution for their refusal to fight.”
4. Pushing for “full funding for the Veterans Administration, and full quality health treatment (including mental health) and benefits for veterans when they return from duty.”

We still haven’t heard anything to disagree with. There are plenty of other organizations fighting to end this occupation. But we think this one has more umph than some of the others. So, here’s the deal: just give five. That’s it. Just give five measly smackers to a fantastic organization doing what those of us without military service can’t do: tell the absolute truth about war. Give by clicking this sentence.

On behalf of our troops, thank you in advance.